1. Field
The present invention is related to the field of computer vision for vehicles, and particularly automatic object detection in the automotive domain. (“Automotive” equally applies to any land, air or sea vehicle). More precisely, the invention belongs to the domain of driver assistance systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is known that object position detection systems with a radar sensor and mounted on a host vehicle may detect other vehicles in the vicinity of a host vehicle and may return information like the lateral and longitudinal position of those vehicles. “Vicinity” is the area around the host vehicle which is covered by one or more sensors of the host vehicle. Due to the manner the radar sensor measures this information, the lateral component of the position may be very inaccurate and can vary in the range of a vehicle width. For most applications a more precise estimation of the lateral position is thus required. “Position” is the position of the object in the input field of the sensor(s) relative to the position of the host vehicle.
Existing systems integrate the measured positions over time using e.g. a Kalman filter, creating the problem of an increased latency between the actual lateral position of the vehicle and the position estimated by such a system. However such an increased latency is a disadvantage especially for applications relying on lateral movements.
Document U.S. Pat. No. 6,590,521 B1 describes an object recognition system in a car. The system consists of a radar detection for coarse detection for which then the outline of the detected vehicle is determined by means of an edge detection. Furthermore, lane detection and free area detection are also described. This system uses edge-based object border detection for detecting the left, right, lower and upper border of an object.
Document US 2004/0178945 A1 describes an object location system for a road vehicle, which system uses radar means for detecting vehicles and a camera for extracting properties of the detected objects.